And it begins

Boat Tour on the Chicago River
Originally uploaded by discopalace.

Chicago residents in summertime are like butterflies - biologically and socially. For so long we've been cocooned in jackets, scarves, and gloves and yet one glimpse of sunshine is enough to thaw us out, and we abandon the layers and emerge in droves to flit from street fair to beer festival to al fresco eatery.

And yesterday marked my formal release from the winter doldrums into society once more. But it's funny because when I actually sit down and look at what I did yesterday, I have set a pretty impressive pace for the social season. Check this out:

Morning

Actually, I didn't see much of Saturday morning. I was monstrously hungover from a Friday evening spent in a humid bar drinking with Aussie friends - wine, cocktails, more wine. When we emerged into the steamy neighbourhood given some release from a recent thunderstorm, I was not feeling too well. Consequently, Saturday morning was a blur.

Afternoon

By the afternoon I was feeling slightly more human, buoyed by peppermint tea and cheetos. Then Biggsy called to say he'd opened a bottle of red and wanted to go and see a street festival in his neighbourhood. So we called Jenn, and over we all went to Biggsy's place. One diet coke, two margaritas, and about a thousand buffalo wings later, and I was feeling much better.

Evening

Leaving the street fair, I raced home and got ready to meet my new British friend Wongy, because I'd been given free tickets to a New Zealand wine class and she'd agreed to go with me. Once we got to the wine school, we met up with my friend Macquarie and we sat together in the front row. In contrast to the Aussie class I'd done at the store a few weeks before, this class was very intense. Not even intensive, it was just intense. We literally sat there with a flight of wines in front of us for 30 minutes before we were even allowed to sip the first one! Thirty minutes people, sheesh. When it finally came time to taste the first wine - a Sauvignon Blanc if you need to know - me and Macquarie just about dived on it. We later agreed that the class was good, just way too thorough for us and not what we thought it was going to be.

Then we left the wine school, met up with our other chum Cotton, and we piled into a cab to go out to Mayfest 2007 at Lincoln Square - the giant beer festival here with great beer steins and bratwurst sandwiches - the whole lot. This time last year, J&T were staying with me and we went to the festival and we had a ball, so I was very hopeful for a similar good time this year. But the place was PACKED and we couldn't get tickets or steins and the bars were going to close at 10pm anyway so we left and instead sat inside a very crowded (but famous) beer hall on the pedestrian street just off the Square.

At around midnight we left the beer hall and the boys decided they were going to go to a house party and me and Wongy wanted to get some food. So we parted ways at a diner and the boys walked for squillions of miles to get a cab.

Morning

I may have missed Saturday morning, but I picked up Sunday morning instead. At around 1am, me and Wongy decided that the diner we'd gone into had probably broken plenty of health codes in recent times and we were afraid to sit down (much less eat), so we got a cab and went to our favourite diner in Boystown instead. And I wolfed down steak, eggs, potatoes and delicious rye toast plus coffee at 2am. It rounded out my evening so beautifully I can't tell you how good it felt.

So do you see? If this pace keeps up, I'm going to have an absolute cracking summer. I just have to remember to keep writing it all down like this or else I'm never going to retain it all!